Influência da temperatura no reparo dos ninhos de Nasutitermes Ephratae (Holmgren,1910) (Blattodea: Isoptera)

Abstract

The increase in the average temperature of Planet Earth has been increasing due to global warming. This increase will possibly affect numerous species and their ecosystems, including termites (or termites), social insects that play an important role in ecosystem maintenance through the decomposition of organic matter and as natural “engineers”, helping to cycle nutrients and favoring fauna and flora. of their habitats. Furthermore, these insects have an important attribute, nesting, a key factor in the development of the group and adaptation to climate change. A good example is temperature, precisely because it limits the distribution of these insects, considering that they are ectothermic and are directly influenced by thermal variation and humidity. From this perspective, they are animals very susceptible to the impact of changes generated by global warming. Therefore, the present work aimed to observe whether the nest repair activity of Nasutitermes ephratae is influenced by environmental temperature. An area of 25 cm2 of the envelope of nine nests was removed at different times of the day (with different ambient temperature values) and the number of individuals recruited for repair activity was quantified three minutes later. The results indicate that there was no variation in the number of individuals recruited for repair at times of the day with different temperature values. The lack of temperature effect may be due to the smaller temperature variation inside the colony in relation to the environment, and the possibility that the termites in the studied population have a wide range of thermal tolerance for repair activity